A
week is a long time in politics: a
saying that was old long before the arrival of the internet placed us fair and
square in a world of instant everything. Certainly most of us seem to travel an
unimaginable distance through life in the space of seven days – and a
journey particularly marked in that
first Holy Week in Jerusalem almost 2000 years ago
As
the crowds formed, dispersed, regrouped around the person of the itinerant
preacher from Galilee, the mood of the city changed with them, from joy to anger,
from perplexity to frustration (and later from emptiness to incredulous joy).
We’ve made that journey too, as together we’ve walked the way of the cross and
now we’re reaching the final act of the drama…
It’s
Thursday, and so the Triduum, the great Three Days of God’s saving action, is
upon us.
Faced
with human indifference, with our repeated failure to come and learn God’s way,
God has emptied himself, thrown all that he HAS, all that he IS at the problem.
It’s
Thursday.
The
darkness gathers but there’s light and community as a group meets around a
table in an upstairs room.
If
you knew this would be your last night on earth, I wonder what you’d do.
Probably,
try to contact those you love…maybe attempt reconciliation in broken
relationships…no time to finish reading those unopened great works of
literature, to learn Hindi or to visit the far away lands you’d always dreamed of…but still, a
time for unfinished business - or to enjoy a special meal with your friends?
Jesus
had lived a perfect life.
He had only one piece of business left to complete...and so,
he did what he had always done.
He
sat down at table with his disciples.
He
offered hospitality and welcome.
He
invited those who loved him; he also invited the man he knew would betray him.
He
gathered friends and enemies, righteous and wicked and those in between, and he
broke bread with them, and offered them wine.
He
ate with them, as he had countless times before.
He
celebrated the Passover with them, as he must have done year on year.
When
Jesus broke bread, everyone -- the Pharisee and the whore, the rich and the
poor, righteous and sinners -- experienced God's welcome at his table.
When Jesus broke bread, the hungry were fed.
When
Jesus broke bread, serving any who came to him, people experienced what REAL
power, God's power, the power of love really is and does:
I am among you as one who serves.
In
a few moments, we’ll re-live that gesture of service which sums up that self
emptying love and profound intimacy.
“If I, your Lord and
Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought also to wash one another’s feet”
It’s a privilege to kneel and do just that.
It is harder, perhaps, to accept that our feet need
washing.
We all come to God’s table covered with the dust of busy
lives, our worries, sorrows, grievances, failures. We come, footsore from our
journey…bruised from painful encounters on the way, “guiltie of dust and sin”.
But, knowing this, it can still be so hard to accept that we need to sit, with
the disciples, and ;et Jesus kneel before us.
Like
Peter, we must acknowledge our need,
and, once cleansed, we may sit down to the feast.
On
this night, as Jesus invites us to his table, he invites us to remember him.
To
remember him EVERY time we break bread -- at the altar, certainly, but
also in the school canteen, as we grab a sandwich on the run, as we come together
with friends or family.
For
tonight is very much about Community too…and so there is another invitation, in
this breaking of bread. For on this night, this very night on which he was
betrayed, Jesus broke bread, and said to those gathered,
"This
is my Body."
Not
just the bread, but the company who gather to share it: this is Jesus' Body,
given for the world.
And
whenever we gather with others made in God's image, others for whom Christ gave
himself, Jesus invites us to re-member, to bring his broken body together once
again, aware of and honouring his presence in one another
It's
a solemn charge, and an awesome opportunity, to encounter and receive Christ in
everyone we encounter, and to remember that in the Eucharist it is we ourselves
who are offered. To live out the words of Augustine
YOU are to be taken, blessed, broken and shared
Taken…called…set
apart by God for his purposes.
Blessed…for
this grace filled encounter should change each of us forever.
Broken…for
the call is to the way of the cross, which we have to take up each and every
day,
Shared…because
as Christ’s Body, WE are the ministers
of his Kingdom in a needy world.
So
that is the invitation we receive tonight, to break bread in the presence of
the one who celebrated his last supper as he did every meal, to be the Body of
the one whose body was broken for us.
This
is my body. Do this in remembrance of me.
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